Re-photo

FE – Further Education – has always been a neglected area. It’s something that hasn’t been helped by the Cinderella complex that has had many of the larger and more successful colleges jumping to grab the glass slipper and aloughing off their lower level courses to become part of Higher Education. Vocational education has always been looked down on in the UK, sneered at by the Oxbridge elite who dominate our culture and politics. Of course its a class thing – but what isn’t in Britain.

Behind the specifics of the fight at Lambeth is the drive to convert public education to private profit, and this particular sector – if the Conservatives and their rich friends who own the companies trying to take over education get their way – will be the first to go.

I arrived at Clapham Common where the march was gathering a little early and had time to take a little walk around. It was a little sad to see that one particular area that I’d photographed nearby was no longer there, a small street of houses replaced by a rather dull block. Clapham has been going upmarket for many years now, and this was just a small part of the old area. I was saddened but not surprised.

There wasn’t a great deal happening when I returned to Clapham Common, and the lighting was tricky, with areas of shade under the trees along with bright sun. There was an ‘open mike’ with anyone who wanted to invited to speak, and I photographed quite a few of them, but it didn’t make for exciting images, though there were some banners to liven up the background.

Things got a lot more interesting when people were told to pick up their banners and form up for the march, but things happened rather quickly and in a very small area, so it wasn’t easy to be in the right place.

Once the march was on the street, things were a little easier, and the many banners made the march much more visible as well as giving me something to photograph. I rather like to keep my feet on the ground these days as I no longer have any head for heights at all, but I decided to clamber (with some difficulty) onto a barrier by some traffic lights for a few pictures, though some of the marchers as well as myself were rather worried about my safety!

I particularly wanted a good view of the Lambeth College Unison banner at the front of the march, just behind the rather less attractive Lambeth College UCU banner (which of course features in some other pictures), and the extra height helped with this.

One of London’s notable landmarks that the march went past was the mosaic at Stockwell tube station, to Jean Charles de Menezes, murdered catching a train here by blundering police in 2005. Of course I’ve photographed it before, but I walked over to take another picture. Later as the march came into Brixton, I went across the road to photograph the tree outside Brixton Police station, with its pictures and momentos of some of those killed by police there, including Ricky Bishop and Sean Rigg. It’s a part of the context of this march and the area the college serves. And I was particularly keen to that my pictures would show some of central Brixton, with its railway bridge across the High Street and the Underground station and shops.

As the march came to Windrush Square I ran ahead and on to the open-top bus waiting there as a platform for the speakers. But the arrival of the march there was less impressive than I had hoped, perhaps because the area is now so sterile, obviously landscaped with the intent of being hostile and unwelcoming and discouraging people from meeting there. I soon returned to ground (and an angry complaint from the event security who had failed to be around when I got on the bus so I was unable to ask for permission to board.)

Using a bus as a speaker’s platform obviously makes sense with large crowds, but this was not a particularly large crowd, though at least it meant that most of the banners stayed up for the rally. But it isn’t ideal for photography. If you work on the top of the bus with the speakers you are at best seeing them in profile or from behind, seldom ideal positions. From the ground, close to the bus the view up is too distorting, and you have to move back and use a very long lens, and some speakers who are fairly short stand so they are almost completely invisible.

Fortunately I’d put the 70-300mm in my camera bag that morning. It isn’t a huge weight, but I still don’t carry it unless I think it will be necessary. I always prefer to work as close as possible, and for most purposes the 28-105mm DX lens – equivalent at its long end to a 157mm – is longer than I need. But on this occasion it would be definitely underpowered. Most of the pictures are at 300mm, when the lens loses a little of its edge, and I would perhaps have got crisper images by taking them in DX mode at 200mm. I didn’t really need the full 7360 x 4912 pixels of the D800E.

It might also have helped to use a wider aperture; as usual I was saving thinking by using program mode, and Nikon tend to stop lenses down rather more than I would. The picture of John McDonnell was taken at 1/1000 f16 (ISO 640) and if I had been thinking I would probably have worked at f8 to avoid the softening effects of diffraction. The solution is very simple – with a turn of the thumb-wheel you engage program shift, but you have to think to do it. It was probably also a stop or two underexposed with the pattern metering being a little confused by all the bright sky, but this wasn’t a problem.

You can see more of the pictures at Lambeth College March for Further Education.

UCU members there have been on strike since 3 June and Unison members joined them in a three-day strike last week; there were solidarity protests at many colleges around the country last Wednesday.  And now there is a Sponsor a striker campaign. But there has been an almost total news blackout by newspapers and broadcast media outside of the fringe socialist press. Too many biting footballers or right wing politicians scratching their noses for a strike to be news. Next you’ll expect the BBC to report a protest.

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May 14 happens to be my birthday, though I’ve had too many to make much of a fuss about it, and I still went out and took pictures. Though I didn’t start until around tea-time, having by then been out for an excellent birthday lunch with my wife at one of my favourite Indian restuarants.  I was feeling pretty good after this, having consumed with it a large bottle of that ‘Indian’ less gassy lager brewed in Bedford (costing almost as much as my buffet meal.)

And it really was fine weather, warm and sunny but not too hot, and I was in a good mood, though just a littel disappointed when I arrived outside The Spectator offices where the protest was due to start dead on time to find nobody there.

It’s not unusual for me to turn up at protests and find they don’t happen, but today I was fairly certain that this one would take place, if just a little late. Rather than waiting on the street outside the offices I decided to head towards the nearest pub, where I arrived to find a small group of the protesters standing outside (the Romany flag was a giveaway), just about to leave for the protest. Rather than drink on my own – something I seldom do – I went with them.

It was really good lighting, sun from the side, and the light walls of the offices around giving some natural fill so I didn’t need to use flash. The protesters were from the Traveller Movement, here to protest against the magazine’s publication of an article by Rod Little supporting the use of racist terms – the ‘g’ and ‘p’ words – to describe travellers, Roma and gypsies – more about this in Travellers protest Spectator’s racist language in My London Diary.

After the protesters had stood outside the offices for around a quarter of an hour, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson came out to greet them carrying a plate of chocolate cake and some serviettes.  It was, he told them his birthday, and they had far more cake inside the office than they could eat, so would they like some. Although most of the protesters decided they didn’t want to eat his cake, I had no such problems, and told him it was my own birthday too, though I was a little older as I took a large slice. It was delicious, and came as an unexpected bonus. I can’t recall ever having been at a protest before where the person being protested against has offered cake.

Not of course that cake makes his actions as an editor any more excusable. It is language that no reputable journalist would entertain, and certainly against the clear guidelines of my union, the NUJ, on the fair and accurate reporting of race relations subjects.

Soon after the protesters rang on the doorbell and went inside to deliver their letter of protest, and shortly after I left to catch a bus to the Ukranian embassy in Notting Hill. It was the evening rush hour, so the journey was slow, very slow. There are quite a lot of ‘bus lanes’ but these have a tendency to give out where they are most needed, and to be clogged by taxis elsewhere. Fortunately I was in no great hurry, and the top deck of a London bus is a good place from which to view the city, and just occasionally to take photographs from, though I don’t think I did so. Or at least, as so often, none that were worth keeping.

As I had anticipated, things were hardly starting by the time I arrived at the Ukrainian Embassy in the very posh backstreet of Holland Park.  Although a Communist newspaper described the event the following day as a ‘siege‘, the protesters were actually standing rather peacefully on the opposite side of the road, making it difficult to really connect them with the embassy visually. It didn’t help either that the embassy’s blue and yellow flag was hanging limply in a thin line down its post.

After a few minutes, some of the protesters got out their banners, and I noticed that from a particular position one was reflected in the brass plate on the embassy gate. Having taken it from the other side of the road I tried to go closer to the gate and work with the reflection, but couldn’t get it work as I wanted – and while I was trying, a police car came and parked in the way, bringing the number of diplomatic officers present to two.

The protest had united various communist groups which generally have little in common other than their opposition to US imperialism, which they saw as behind a fascist coup in the Ukraine. The incident which sparked the protest was an attack on a protest camp and Trade Unions House in Odessa on May 2, when 42 people were killed and over 200 injured by Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

They see the current government in Ukraine as openly fascist and anti-democratic and call it a ‘Neo-Nazi junta‘, though this led to a problem with the chanting of slogans, with some factions supporting the Spanish pronunciation and others the fully anglicized version of junta, and argument that got just a little heated. Some too were unhappy at being photographed by the capitalist press – that is me, who regularly gets labelled as a ‘dirty commie’ by the right wing because of my membership of the NUJ.

Of course I took the usual pictures of people with banners and placards. I played a little with putting the hammer and sickle in the corner of too many of them, but I wasn’t really too pleased with the images and wanted something a little more striking.

Eventually I think I found it, with the protest and its reflectioin in the windscreen and black bonnet of a parked car. I made a couple of frames and then moved away. It took a little care in printing to get the effect I had seen, but I rather like it.

I walked back along Holland Park towards the centre of London rather than to the closer bus stop I had come to, because I thought I would pay a visit to St Volodmyr, the patron saint of Ukraine and the king who converted the country to Christianity by decree a little over a thousand years ago. Around him now are flowers and photographs of the martyrs of the Maidan; some of them may have been fascists, but most were nationalists who wanted freedom in their country.

It was getting just a little dark, and I photographed the dark metal figure both with and without flash – as you can see in Communists & Anti-Fa protest Ukraine Massacres. The exposure above without flash has more interesting lighting and gives more detail in the statue. Flash on camera flattens the statue too much, though renders the flowers around the base of the statue in a wider view well.

It was time to go home, and to eat some of my own birthday cake after I’d blown out the candles.

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I was on my knees in the doorway – locked and guarded by security – of the Department of Work and Pensions, where protesters from disablement activists group DPAC had brought a letter for the Minister for Disabled People, Mike Penning.  There wasn’t a great deal of room, even though I was the only photographer in front of the protesters, and I was using the 16-35mm, so was very close to the guy holding the envelope. Even at the time I was wishing they had written his name rather more clearly on the envelope, though I’ve brought it out a little in post-processing.

The lighting was tricky, with a little bright sunlight leaking into the scene in various areas, but all the significant subject matter in shade. Those near-white buildings opposite were very bright – and have been brought down quite a bit in Lightroom, where I’ve also brought up the shadows considerably. As taken the envelope was reflecting quite a lot of light and looked rather lighter than a manilla envelope should. But Nikon’s pattern metering worked well, though I doubt if this picture would have worked if I had not been using RAW.

Although I was only working at f5.6 (1/125, ISO 640) at 17mm there was considerable depth of field and the figures in the foreground – with the slight exception of the moving tiger – are pin sharp. Those at the back and the background are a little soft, just enough to add a little depth to the image, and the slowish shutter speed adds just a slight blur to those moving, particularly one hand of the figure holding the poster ‘Stop Killing Us’.

I’ve not bothered to correct the slight barrel distortion at 17mm, because I think it actually – if fairly subliminally – improves the image. You can see it in the lines of the background building and I think it has a slight effect of keeping the eye drawn in to the centre.  It is actually more than you think – that tiger’s heel at bottom left just touches the edge of the frame after correction.

Of course I didn’t have time to think about everything when I was making the image – things were changing quite rapidly as usual, but I was certainly very conscious of the framing – and the images before and after this and its partner were both made at 16mm and from slightly different positions.  This was the sixth of three seven frames where I was concentrating on the letter (the next differs only in having the tiger stationary a foot or so to the right), and after it I moved to the left as I wanted a clearer view of the placard with the scissors and the message ‘ILF Cruelist Cut’. But this picture stood out.

The next frame was good too, and appealed to me because the tiger holds in his left hand a grey bag with my name, MARSHALL, clearly visible – making this a pre-signed image. But it seemed just a little static compared to the above. Perhaps I should get one of those bags and take it to all protests!

This was another picture I liked, and I had to look at the original RAW file to confirm that this was exactly how I framed it when making the picture. It’s another good example of why I like working close with the wide-angle – in this picture at 21mm. Here I had more time to work and took around 20 frames – this has the best framing and fortunately the best expression on the speaker’s face too. And it shows up those tattoos well.

When it became clear security would not let the protesters in to deliver the letter, Mary Glindon, the Labour MP for North Tyneside took it in for them

Of course I don’t always get what I want, but at this protest I made a number of images I was pleased with. Although it was quite crowded on the pavement – and wheelchairs take up quite a lot of space, there were not very many other photographers present – and those present cooperated with each other. The DPAC protesters are always nice people to work with and of course they have great reason to protest, with disabled people having suffered the most from the government’s cuts. You can read more about their protest  at Save Independent Living Fund where there are also quite a few more of my pictures from the event.

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